It is once more the picture of a moral, emotional revolution, the kind
of subject that seems to demand a narrator. The story is so little a
matter of action that when the revolution is complete there is nothing
more to be said. Its result in action is indifferent; the man and the
woman may marry or part, the subject is unaffected either way. The
progress of the tale lies in the consciousness of the people in it,
and somebody is needed, it might have been supposed, to tell us how it
all came to pass. Not the author, perhaps, or any of the characters in
person; but at least it must be told, at any given juncture, from
somebody's point of view, composing and reflecting the story of an
experience. But in The Wings of the Dove there is next to no narrative
at all, strictly speaking. Who is there that narrates? The author a
little, it is true, for the people have to be described, placed,
brought on the scene to begin with. But afterwards? Densher, Kate,
Milly, Susan Stringham, each in turn _seems_ to take up the story and
to provide the point of view, and where it is absolutely needful they
really do so; they give the mirror for the visible scene about them,
Alpine heights, London streets, Venetian palaces. But that is
incidental; of the progress of the tale they offer no account. They
_act_ it, and not only in their spoken words, but also and much more
in the silent drama that is perpetually going forward within them.
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